JOHNNY BULL

by Yale, Katherine Betsko

Having married an American serviceman during his wartime stint in England, Iris has looked forward to coming to the United States - to the glittering, glamorous world she has seen depicted in Hollywood movies. But her new home turns out to be a grimy coal mining town in Pennsylvania where life is dull and arduous. The play is both a revealing study of the men who labour in the mines and a poignant statement about the strong bonds of sisterhood which exist between the women who share their lives, and the action of the play moves inexorably and powerfully through a series of crises - some hilarious, some deeply stirring - which brings Iris both the understanding she needs to comprehend her fate, and also the strength to break away and seek a better life for herself and her infant daughter.